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A jury deliberated merely four and a half hours Tuesday before coming back with their verdict: Guilty of first-degree. And not a twitch of reaction from the swiftly convicted Adonay Zekarias.

The why of it, though, has never been explored.

Strictly speaking, motive is irrelevant at trial. It doesn’t matter, in a legal context, what the reason was for Zekarias stalking 55-year-old Semret along a Cabbagetown laneway early on the rainy morning of Oct. 23, 2012 — the blurry image captured by security cameras and played in court. It doesn’t matter why Zekarias came up behind the unsuspecting Semret and attacked her with a long-bladed knife, stabbing the poor woman seven times, one thrust so deep that it went right through her abdomen and nicked her spine.

As the Crown told jurors in the opening address three weeks ago: “There is one thing that you may be expecting to hear that we are not going to be able to give you: a motive. Despite a thorough police investigation, that motive remains unknown.”

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Defence lawyer Susan Adams, burdened with overwhelming circumstantial evidence against her client, tried to make an issue out of what the prosecution case lacked in underlying basis, emphasizing the Crown “presented no evidence whatsoever about a motive for the killing.” Adams added: “No matter how hard they are forced, the puzzle pieces just do not fit. Why would Zekarias want to harm Semret?”

It was a scratchy bid at diverting attention from the profoundly incriminating facts:

Zacharias’ DNA found under Semret’s fingernails — she’d fought hard for her life.

His blood on the umbrella wielded against the attacker by David Hughes, the Good Samarian who’d run to Semret’s assistance and heard her last moaning word. Did he stab you? “Yes.”

A call from Zekarias’ cellphone 30 minutes after the assault, made within a kilometre of the crime scene, to the defendant’s sister in Virginia.

Zekarias’ flight to Germany on Dec. 9, from where he monitored the murder investigation on the Internet, as detectives were able to ascertain. After police put out an initial description of the suspect — a white man who may have walked with a limp (Zekarias is brown-skinned and has no limp) — he returned to Canada, apparently confident that it was safe to do so.

The litany of lies Zekarias gave to police when they finally questioned him as a suspect, including a claim that he was not acquainted with Semret despite having her photo on his laptop.

A stupid, sloppy murder on top of everything else.

That motive vacuum, however, leaves a troubling blank space in the narrative of this brutal killing, because the rational mind longs for explanation, however irrational it might be.

Indeed, motive is easier to deduce where this murder crosses bloody paths with a later homicide. The jury was never told that Zekarias, 43, is also charged with first-degree murder in the slaying and dismemberment of another woman, Rigat Ghirmay, last seen alive May 15, 2013, her torso discovered inside a duffel bag lying alongside a creek near Alliance Ave. in the area of Jane St. and Eglinton Ave. That was the only part of Ghirmay ever recovered.

Police investigators allege that Ghirmay was killed, likely in her own apartment, after she became suspicious that Zekarias had murdered Semret. Zekarias had been living with Ghirmay — it’s unclear whether they were in a romantic relationship — but had moved out a week after Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux told a May 6, 2013, press conference that he believed Semret’s assailant sustained serious injuries to his arms or hands during the attack.

That press conference may have sealed Ghirmay’s fate.

It was Ghirmay, police have said, who made a 9-1-1 call from their Humber Blvd. apartment seeking help for lacerations on Zekarias’ hands — 105 minutes after Semret was left mortally wounded in that laneway. Zekarias told the 9-1-1 operator he’d hurt himself lifting something but then claimed, to paramedics, that he’d caught his hands in a door. Neither explanation equated to the sharp-force nature of his injuries.

Ghirmay was mentioned only briefly at trial, when Giroux testified that she was now deceased. The publication ban covering Ghirmay melted away once the jury departed to deliberate.

All three principals were refugees from Eritrea. Two of them — the women, the victims — had begun to make new lives for themselves, which is why they came to Canada. At the time of her death, Ghirmay had recently graduated from a personal support worker program. Semret was holding down a job as nightshift housekeeper at the Delta Chelsea Hotel downtown. The hotel was just a short walk from her flat on leafy Winchester St., and she was on her way home when Zekarias attacked her. From the video, it’s clear Semret never saw Zekarias approaching her from behind, never heard his footsteps.

So few details emerged at trial about Semret’s life in Toronto, or why she came to this country, leaving behind a husband and four grown children, what her hopes and dreams may have been. She seems a woman who kept her personal life private and went her own quiet way. Only a handful of friends came forward afterwards to say that they’d known her.

But Zekarias knew her.

They arrived in Canada within months of each other, Zekarias in late 2009 and Semret in March 2010. For a time, they both resided at the same refugee shelter, Sojourn House on Ontario St. They attended English classes together. Semret helped Zekarias with his immigration paperwork. Both were granted refugee status on the basis of religious persecution.

So Semret was helpful to Zekarias. They shared heritage and experiences. Separate journeys across 11,000 kilometres, from Eritrea to Toronto, which for Nighisti Semret ended in a rain-slicked alley in Cabbagetown.

“He waited in the dark, in the pouring rain, in a location across town from where he resided, armed with a large kitchen knife, because he planned to kill her,” Crown prosecutor Mary Humphrey told the jury in her closing. “He executed his plan quickly, a surprise attack. No talking, no negotiating, no hesitating. He had lots of time to deliberate about the consequences of his actions while he was stalking her.”

Why did you do it? For the love of God, why?

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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